Embodiments of the present invention relate in general to electronic collaboration, and in particular to techniques for enabling video conferencing with interactive sharing of drawings and/or other information.
Video conferencing is widely used to facilitate “face-to-face” video/audio communication between parties located at two or more remote locations. One limitation with conventional video conferencing systems is that they typically do not allow the conference participants to share drawings in an interactive manner. For example, if a first participant wishes to share a drawing with a second, remote participant, the first participant is generally limited to pointing the video camera on his/her side to the medium on which the drawing is drawn (e.g., a piece of paper or a whiteboard), hoping that the second participant can see it clearly via the video feed. In this example, the second participant cannot interactively mark up or otherwise make changes to the drawing.
It is possible to use conventional interactive whiteboard (IWB) systems in parallel with conventional video conferencing systems to enable shared drawing capability during a video conference. For instance, a first IWB system located at a first site of a video conference can be connected to a second IWB system located at a second site of the video conference. The first IWB system can capture a drawing made by a user at the first site and convert the drawing into digital form. The digitized representation of the drawing can then be displayed at both the first IWB system and the second IWB system, thereby allowing the drawing to be manipulated by users at both the first and second sites.
However, setting up and operating separate IWB and video conferencing systems in this manner can be a complex and time-consuming endeavor. For example, each system generally requires separate calibration, connection management, and other setup tasks. In addition, using separate IWB and video conferencing systems generally requires multiple displays, input devices, and other components, thereby increasing costs, space requirements, and cognitive load on users who must learn and maintain each system.